Sinners' Playground (The Harlequin Crew #1) - Caroline Peckham Page 0,207

showed up here, beautiful, to tell me off? Because it sounds like a wasted journey.”

“I told you why I’m here,” she said firmly. “And can we get the fuck on with the trade because this place smells like bullshit. Or maybe it’s just the words coming out of your mouth.”

I wheeled towards her, shoving her up against the wall and baring my teeth in her face. I could feel her heart thundering against my flesh as my cock drove into her thigh and she started panting like a bitch in heat. “Why the fuck would I lie? I’m proud of each and every Harlequin death I’ve delivered. I declared war on Fox and his little crew a long time ago, I wouldn’t waste the journey to declare it again. And trust me, if I got that close to his house, I’d be sneaking in the back door and gutting each of them in their beds.”

“Seems like an unfair fight.” She lifted her chin, all snark and defiance. It was making me wanna force her to her knees and make her choke on my cock until the fight went out of her. I had the feeling it would take a bit more than that though from the look in her eyes.

“You don’t know what an unfair fight looks like, beautiful,” I growled and her throat bobbed.

“Wanna bet?” she snarled and I cocked my head, my curiosity piqued.

“Who hurt you?” I demanded, darkness seeping into my blood and settling there.

“It would be quicker to list who didn’t,” she bit at me and the devil in me leaned closer.

I got nose to nose with her, breathing in her coconut scent and the desire pouring from her eyes as keenly as her pain. “Well do me a favour, lost girl. Remind me to fuck you before you take a razor blade to your wrists. It would be a damn shame for that body to go to waste before I could get my fill of it.”

Her fist came up to hit me and I caught it with a smirk, pushing my tongue between the middle of her fingers then shoving away from the wall and hearing her trail after me. “Great, well book me in for that next week. I’m free on any day that doesn’t end in a Y.”

I grunted.

“You would have laughed at that once,” she muttered.

“The next time I laugh it’ll be over a Harlequin’s corpse.”

“Wow, savage, Mr Stone. You should really consider a career in kids tv.”

I turned my head to hide a smile. Damn beautiful bitch.

“Why’d you choose Stone anyways? You sound like some sort of British detective. Maverick Stone, fights crime by day, giggles over corpses by night.”

“It was the first name in the surname book.” I shrugged.

“The surname book?” she snorted and I shot her a sharp look. “And surely that would have been like Aadvark or some shit. Maverick Aadvark, I actually kinda like that. Did you know aardvarks can eat up to fifty thousand ants in one night? That’s like, so many ants. Can you imagine eating that many ants?”

“No.”

“I once saw a colony of ants carrying a whole corndog. A whole corndog, Maverick.”

“What’s your point?” I rounded on her, my eyes narrowing.

She shrugged. “It’s just a lot of corndog to carry for all those tiny ants.”

I frowned, seeing so much of the girl I’d once laughed with, laying on the beach while the sun melted into the sea and we knew it would rise again and again, believing our time together would never end. How naive.

Fuck it, I could dangle my key over her head all night. And I’d get her to jump through as many hoops as I could before she realised I was never going to give it to her. By the time I’d fucked her and left her spent with a permanent ache between her thighs, I’d take her key for myself. And it wouldn’t be long before I squeezed the location of the others from one of her boyfriends’ lips while they watched their brothers bleed out around them. Because the contents of that crypt was mine. And no long lost girl was going to take it from me.

"T hey told me you were the only one who tried to come after me," I said in a low voice as Maverick opened a safe that was hidden in the wall, unlocking it and taking his key from within.

I’d given him the information he’d wanted about the Harlequins and now it was